Numerous licenses confuse new participants in the free/open source software
(FOSS) world. In this paper, we provide a general introduction to eleven commonly-used
FOSS licenses. By applying seven specific considerations that are proposed in our study,
developers can identify which license suits their needs best. We further use the above
considerations to rank these FOSS licenses, which are Open Source Initiative (OSI)-aproved,
in terms of their degree of openness. The recently established Creative Commons
(CC), based on FOSS concepts, provides yet another clean model for licensing creative
works. We attempt to use the CC licensing model to analyze FOSS licenses, so that new
participants can better understand these licenses. By examining these FOSS licenses with
CC¡¦s four differentiating elements (attribution; noncommercial; no derivative works;
share alike), we construct a table with which new participants could understand FOSS
and the above categories with the knowledge of the CC licensing model. We also rank
these licenses based on CC¡¦s differentiating elements and offer a different approach to
examine the openness of FOSS licenses.